* Narcotraficantes = drug traffickers, ladrón = thief, mal educados = badly raised, and todos = all. As I recount at the beginning of My Green-Eyed Mexican, in Mexico City I was robbed in a market -- ironically on a street called Jésus María. Compostela alludes to Santiago de Compostela, the famous pilgrimage site in Galicia, Spain. Del Cielo = of Heaven.

** In Buddhism, the Bardo is the realm through which the soul travels after death.

*** Hamlet speculates about that sleep of death, when his body shuffles off its mortal coil, and he enters that country beyond whose bourn no traveller returns (Hamlet 3.1).

CIRCLE, PERIOD, DOT

Isn't this what we all want

something to leave behind

some dot

.

some period that says, This is the end

my friend

This is the end, beautiful friendThis is the end, my only friend, the endOf our elaborate plans, the endOf everything that stands, the endNo safety or surprise, the endI'll never look into your eyes, again

(The Doors, 1967, lyrics by Jim Morrison)

There may be no safety

and there may or may not be some or surprise

but Jimmy was right about the final point:

there'll definitely be an end.

If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come -- the readiness is all.